


Koinobiont

by gootarts



Category: Umineko no Naku Koro ni | When the Seagulls Cry
Genre: Body Horror, Canon-Typical Dysphoria, Gen, Parasitism, parasitism as a metaphor for the feeling of loss of agency of your own body and also for dysphoria, symbolism tip: spice up normal insect motif stuff by injecting wasps into it! works every time!!!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-17
Updated: 2019-08-17
Packaged: 2020-09-02 14:02:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,876
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20277082
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gootarts/pseuds/gootarts
Summary: The difference between a parasite and a parasitoid--is that a parasitoid will, without fail, kill its host.





	Koinobiont

**Author's Note:**

> I stand by my statement that Erika's motif should've been a parasitoid wasp instead of a spider, not because EVA already had them as a motif, but because of parasitoid wasps' specialization and specifically their association with parasitizing caterpillars, which is very fitting for a character whose entire premise is the type of anti-fantasy specifically designed to counter Beatrice and her--
> 
> [speech cut off as 10 armed guards forcibly escort me from the premises]

_ Koinobiont _, noun-

Parasitoids which are characterized by allowing their hosts to grow alongside the parasitoid before eventually killing them (as opposed to idiobionts, which prevent their hosts from growing). Koinobiont parasitoids are typically wasps that lay eggs inside caterpillars or other arthropods and embed themselves inside the host's tissues before the larval stage. They eventually kill their hosts, usually upon reaching maturity and exiting the host. 

* * *

There were a number of duties that the older servants would typically pass off to their juniors, inevitably accompanied with an exasperated “_ you do it, Yasu _.” If one were to make a list of duties that were subject to this, gardening would inevitably break the top three. It was a hot, boring task that was impossible to do without getting on one’s hands and knees, or getting soil pressed beneath your fingernails so firmly that it could have entered your bloodstream. 

At the same time, though, it was fairly secluded. Quiet. Spread out just enough that the other servants wouldn’t tattle about a bit of daydreaming. The work was hard, and unpleasant, but in a strange sort of way, she liked it. 

The only unfortunate part involved the insects. She’d seen the devastation they’d performed firsthand, but there was something off-putting about rounding them all up and throwing them into a bucket of soapy water to drown, those dozens of tiny lives extinguished at her mere whim. So whenever she was saddled with the task of gardening, she’d always try to focus on the weeds. The others could deal with the bugs. They were servants of the witch, after all. Beatrice’s loyal underlings, watching over the garden. 

In that way, she didn’t understand Kumasawa, didn’t get how the same person who seemed to hold Beatrice in such high esteem could dispatch them so quickly. The older woman didn’t even blink as she swept half a dozen of those small caterpillars into the bucket in a series of plops, only pausing to ruffle her hair once she noticed the younger servant flinch with each one that hit the water. 

“Is there anything on your mind, Shannon?” She asked, in that kind, motherly voice. 

“The caterpillars… aren’t butterflies Beatrice’s messengers..?” Slowly, she reached a hand in the bucket to pluck one up for emphasis, pulling it out of the water as it curled in on itself, frightened of the godly being that had just uprooted it. Kumasawa was silent for a moment, eyes slowly drifting from the squirming insect to her, before giving a gentle sigh. 

“Think of it like this, Shannon,” she said, kneeling down onto the gravel, meeting her eyes. “Butterflies have so many babies because almost all of them are killed or eaten before they turn into adults. And these children don’t know better than to destroy her garden, so Beatrice relies on us to keep it neat and tidy. Wouldn’t Beatrice be happier if they died by the hand of something that cared for them than a random spider or mouse?” 

She held her breath, just for a moment. There was some point to that logic that almost seemed…wrong. But this was _ Kumasawa _, the one who knew about the witch, the one who showed her those magic charms. 

“But aren’t we still killing them?”

“Beatrice tests all of us, even her most loyal servants. This garden is hers, after all.” She gave a small, fiendish grin, alongside that same glance she gave whenever her arthritis seems to flare up. “And we both know how misbehaved servants can make a mess of things! Sometimes you need a bit of discipline when they’re misbehaving.”

There was a wink, one that went on for far too long to be accidental, as her mind flashed back to the pranks that the other servants had been subject to; a key, misplaced. A bright red sock, slipped into the laundry whites. Awkwardly, she glanced down at her feet, mumbling an embarrassed, “Okay.”

At the end of her shift, Kumasawa gets a completely dry bucket with a thin layer of aphids, caterpillars and sawflies trying their hardest to climb up the walls of their cage. She doesn’t look Kumasawa in the eyes, doesn’t ask what the older servant does with them, even if she knows they are nothing more than lambs on the butcher’s block. 

* * *

  
It continued like that for some time, with her plucking them off the garden plants, and Kumasawa dealing with them after that. She didn't know how long it continued, just that the arrangement hits a bump in the road when Natsuhi found a bucket of insects in the freezer. 

By then, she’d grown used to it-- he aphids and caterpillars were pests. The mantids were not, and were to be left alone, aside from any curious stares watching the thing breathe, its abdomen pulsing in and out with every breath. They had set lifecycles; larvae, pupae, adult, with so few species present that it was easy to learn which were which. Which was why she’d paused as she caught a flash of something speckled white, slowly turning over a leaf to get a better view. 

It was a caterpillar, cowering beneath a leaf, with what almost looked like a dozen grains of rice affixed to its back. 

Kumasawa glanced at the bug she points to as a nigh-indescribable expression formed on her face.

“...Leave that one, child,” she said softly, a hand on her shoulder guiding her away from that patch of plants. 

“Why?” 

“That one is... special,” she said, her voice silent while she’d tried to form words, that motherly tone upon her tongue. “It’s not going to eat the roses anymore.”

She tilted her head a little. What Kumasawa said was strange. Unless the rice stuff meant that it would spin a cocoon soon? Butterflies only drank nectar from the flowers, right? None of her books or classes said anything about weird white stuff before pupating, but Kumasawa was wise, and had worked at the mansion for decades. 

If it was not a normal condition, it must have something to do with the island, with the witch. She must have marked them, left some sort of sign that these ones, and these ones alone, were not to be trifled with. Was that why the older servant had gotten rid of the others, while leaving this one untouched? Had Beatrice deemed only a select few worthy of her gifts?

Well, at the very least, it made sense. Her powers were limited, in all likelihood. She could only protect a few until adulthood. Those special few would live on, make children, and continue the cycle. 

* * *

Years pass. She does not touch the little bugs deemed worthy of the witch. They are given their space as she slowly becomes accustomed to drowning the ones Beatrice doesn’t mark. After all, one or two of them always get past even the most attentive servant, year after year. Such is the will of the witch, disciplining those servants who fail her, destroying the garden without regard for their master. 

Years pass, and Battler does not return like he had promised. All that she has to show for the time passing is a frail body. 

It’s nothing, she knows. She’s just a late bloomer. When Battler finally returns, he’ll come back not to a runt, but to somebody who looks like Shannon. Somebody graceful, elegant, like those ballerinas on TV. 

But even that mental image of Shannon smiling in her place feels wrong, somehow. Her growing pangs feel wrong, almost like something has burrowed into her brain whenever she looks at herself in the mirror. Or when the other girls in her class talk about their monthly cycles in whispers in between classes, whispering _ lucky! _ when they learn she has not gotten hers yet. 

The feeling keeps eating at her, gnawing first at her brain, and then at her heart, and then everywhere. She feels the dull pangs in her chest, in her belly. She sorely hopes they’re growing pains, but no matter how closely she looks, her body is the same. Unchanging. It’s almost as if her own body has trapped her soul in a cage of flesh, writhing beneath the skin as the skin containing it grows weaker and weaker with each passing day. Sometimes, she thinks if she claws at her skin enough, it’ll split open, revealing something, anything different from her current shape. Like if she took a knife to her skin, split it open along the spine, something beautiful would plop out, shivering and covered in blood.

That thought grabbed her late at night, tracing the outlines of the veins silently pulsing beneath her skin. She could not slough her skin off like the lindworm, peeling back layers until something beautiful, something _normal_ appeared beneath the flesh. But, with the way her body was now, would it be possible to do something similar? To shed the persona of Shannon, to create a new version of herself, just for a moment? For a day? If her body wouldn’t change to a woman’s, if her fate of being a pathetic, miserable outcast would not change, perhaps, perhaps it could change to something else. Something not based on a butterfly she would never turn into, with its curves and gentle grace, warmed by the rays of the sun. 

_ I want to be a boy. _

His name would be Kanon. He would be the opposite of Shannon, and everything she was not allowed to do; silent, rude, grouchy. Even if he was bound to the same coat of flesh strangling Shannon, he could still breathe. All those small gestures bottled up inside him were allowed to steam out, not to simmer to a boil as he muttered an insult beneath his breath, or refused some menial task another servant shunted onto him. He was allowed to live, to breathe in a way that Shannon could not, as every polite _ sir _ or _ boy _ loosened that strange, indescribable, strangling feeling tight in his veins. It was enough of a taste to tempt him to devour the entire buffet, to slowly let that perfect, impossible Shannon disappear in the wind. 

But that simply didn’t happen, and that reason was not Sayo Yasuda, but George Ushiromiya. Kind, warm George, who treated Shannon like a girl, who spoke so fondly of wanting to make a family. For all the dizzying type of closure Kanon brought, that love, those soft smiles and hands were a different, more addictive kind of liquor, warming her body and soul. It tantalized her with the prospect that Sayo Yasuda could be loved, like the ugly duckling growing to the swan with a beautiful, snow-white train fanning out behind her as she walked. 

Time was no longer a shackle, but a treasure, to be kept close and pulled out cherished every time they were together. Circumstance required that one of the few times they could be together would be on the island, under the premise of a servant escorting one of the family members around. But that too was fine. Yes, she needed to undergo the feat of detangling him from Eva, but it was a feat made shocking simple so long as Krauss or Natsuhi merely showed up. Eva’s volcanic anger would slip from any of her mistakes to the duo, and they would sneak off to the garden or beach.

Such was the case now, despite the warning scent of incoming rain and angry grey sky chaining the two of them to ‘safer’ locations, ones that were merely a panicked dash away from the mansion. So, for now, the two of them were walking in the garden, the roses still blooming in the late summer heat as they talked. It was over simple things; George would talk about business, and how his father’s company was doing. She would smile and nod along, occasionally making a mental note of the things he said, filing them away under things the wife of a businessman should know. The way transactions were made, not on investors but on CEOs out late drinking, or the dozens of terms dotted into casual conversation all got memorized, just in case. While she could never match him in speaking about business, she was learning, asking questions that made him pause and say _ I never thought of that! _

That continued, that back-and-forth, until she spotted the thing, confused and crawling slowly from the dirt to the stone path, those strange white packages clinging to its back. The motion of kneeling to guide it back to the safety of the bush came so naturally that she almost didn’t realize it, not until George spoke up.

“Hm. I didn’t know those were native to Rokkenjima,” George commented as he pushed his glasses a good centimeter or two up his face, crouching down to get a better view but keeping his perfectly ironed pants off the ground. Those words, _ I didn’t know, _so rarely came from him that her response came rushed, with no pause to filter it properly through her mind first. 

“They’re marks from Beatrice,” she explained, gently giving the caterpillar another good prod to spur it back further from where the birds could spot it. “She marks the ones we keep alive, so that we don’t cull too many of them.”

With a smile, she glanced back at George, hoping to get some sort of curious _ I see! _, but was only met with an interested look as he began to speak. “Those are wasp cocoons, actually! The adult wasp finds a young caterpillar, and after injecting its eggs, they develop using its blood as a food source. In a way, they eat it from the inside out, making sure not to touch the vital organs. It’s a really interesting species, actually.”

The mere sentence sent her heart beating faster as her mind slowly processed the meaning.

“But they’re...” Whatever words or tone she’d meant for that sentence was lost as it died halfway down in her throat, suffocating beneath the precise, clinical weight of what George just said. She looked up to him, expectantly, hoping he’d stop, but his words continued exactly as if he didn’t just hear her panicked half-whisper. 

“Once they grow large enough inside the caterpillar, they emerge and spin cocoons like this. The caterpillar is still alive, but at this point in time, the wasps have affected it enough that it won’t eat. It’ll just stay like that until it starves to death. The wasp injects a virus along with the eggs, see. So it looks and acts normal up until the wasps emerge.” He finished the lecture with a broad, expectant grin, but was met with only silence, so he continued. “It’s not magic or Beatrice or anything like that. Just parasitism. Survival of the fittest, like what Darwin proposed.”

“But Kumasawa said...” Her voice died off into a squeak as she felt something knot deep in her throat, slowly clawing its way up her neck to pull at the corners of her mouth, to press at her eyes. Slowly, she dug her nails into the eagle on her thigh, trying to calm down, to force air down past the warm, painful hands grabbing at her throat. George didn’t notice, either out of his physical position, or because of how focused he was on the conversation. He didn’t hear her voice crack, nor her breath coming in heavy gasps. 

“She was probably just trying to make you feel better about it. Sawflies and its ilk are pretty notorious plant pests, so having a healthy population of wasps is beneficial for getting rid of the ones that slip through the pesticides.” he said, those soft, painful words slipping from his tongue without a second thought, slipping and slithering to burrow beneath her skin.

The sky, almost as if answering her, chooses this moment to start showering the garden with rain, the pavement going from bone dry to soaked in a matter of seconds. It was, mercifully, enough to distract her, the water trailing down her skin distracting her just for a moment, long enough to put on the mask of Shannon, to trample down the desperate sobs of Sayo as she entered the mansion. To laugh about getting drenched instead of cry. 

* * *

George’s words, even though she tried to ignore them, to tell herself that they weren’t real, kept ringing in her head like blaring klaxons, drowning out any other thoughts. Nothing she said to herself stopped those thoughts about those caterpillars, Beatrice’s messengers, being devoured alive. At the core, with love cleaved and stripped away, leaving only clinical logic, it made sense. By not killing those infected caterpillars, the wasps would mature, and go after any other living caterpillars. There would be even less reason for the servants to go out with buckets in the middle of the day, stripping the insects from the leaves. 

Somehow, she couldn’t shake that thought of letting those things that had gorged themselves on their insides free. The other things in the garden would just kill the caterpillars. They wouldn’t keep the poor things alive, stringing their lives along until they’d eaten their fill, before finally discarding them like garbage. 

Later when Kumasawa wasn’t looking, she slipped one of the wasp-ridden caterpillars into a pocket, making sure to pluck off all those small, painful-looking cocoons first. It barely moved as she touched it, not even bothering to curl around itself like the others did. Perhaps that was why she felt a pang of guilt just placing it into a glass in her room when she got the chance, so she scavenged a small branch plucked from the garden a moment later. As a last second decision, she topped the glass a fine sheet of mesh, to ensure it wouldn’t suffocate. It was not a very fitting or regal arrangement for one of the servants of the witch, but it was she manage before heading back to her shift. 

When the shift was over, it still had not moved. That was fine, wasn’t it? It was just tired and confused, so it needed time to recover. She slipped the poor thing a couple more fresh leaves, trying to gently jab them as close as possible to its mouth, but there was no reaction, not even as she tried to nudge them under its feet. Please, she whispered to it, watching.

“I got rid of those...” she paused, words running through her head to find some word suitable for those things that fed on its flesh, killing it from the inside and gave naught in return. “Those _ parasites _. I got rid of them for you. Don’t you feel better now?”

Once again, it didn’t react, not even as she lifted the jar to eye level. It just looked… sad. Disheveled. Nothing like the healthy ones, which clung to dear life on the roses, scooting as quickly as they could out of the way when they caught even a glimpse of her. This one didn’t even try to keep itself upright as she accidentally tipped the glass just a little to quickly. 

It felt strange, watching this thing hurting and not being able to do anything. No matter how much she wished to be a witch, or daydreamed about being the lord of the island, she couldn’t even save this small life. All she could do is give it food and hope.   


She wasn’t sure when it died. When she had prodded a couple more leaves into the cage before she had left for the day, it hadn’t moved, but she didn’t have the time to watch as she locked the door behind her. But when she’d gotten back, it was on its side, curled in on itself, motionless. 

Some voice in the back of her head, taking on Kanon's familiar cadence, tried to soothe it over as it whispered. _It’s just a bug. You kill dozens of them every day_. But, it wasn’t just a bug, was it? Even though she’d long grown out of superstition, it was still one of Beatrice’s messengers. They were supposed to be special. Not something that would just keel over and die like this, living out its final hours not in the garden but in a cage. A cage Sayo had created herself. 

Later that night, she had buried it in the garden, whispering those old refrains she had picked up at Fukuin. 

_ Earth to earth. _

_ Ashes to ashes. _

_ Dust to dust. _

* * *

The noise of applause was a odd type of deafening. If not for the strange, tense atmosphere, the scene before her would have almost felt like a wedding, reuniting with old friends and family as she walked down the aisle to her eternally destined. Instead of a cloak following a brilliantly white dress, she was wearing an itchy wig with a bulky silk gown trailing at her heels. It was nothing like those strange, beautiful daydreams, where she would walk down the red carpet with George (_ or Battler _, her treacherous mind whispers) at her side. No, this dress was old, its embroidery eaten away by moths and run ragged by time, its exaggerated curves sagging at her waist and chest as Genji slowly opened the door to the study. 

Logically, it made sense that she would come face-to-face with the Head. She had solved his riddle, after all. But she wasn’t sure what to say to him as his eyes traced her form. The puzzle itself was her goal, not the solution; she had no real need of ten tons of gold, useful as it might be to George. She just wanted to challenge it, to throw her wits at that game nobody else had solved, to prove her worth as the lord of Rokkenjima. If that was meant for a member of the family to uncover, she would gladly lock her lips and throw away the key if it meant she could be together with George. 

She watched, waiting for some sort of cue for what to do. Should she bow, like she had in the past? Should she look him in the eye? In the end, it was Kinzo’s posture, kneeling, that drove her to walk over, simply to watch him as he tugged at the hem of her dress, eyes glossy with tears as he begged forgiveness to a ghost. 

His rants to Beatrice in the past were nothing like this. They were screamed to the air, in hopes some wandering angel may hear them, not spoken as his eyes bored holes into her own. It was enough to make anybody freeze as he continued, every muscle in her body on razor-thin edge, until, finally, some of his words cut past the shock and into her flesh. _Your parents are Lady Beatrice and the Master._

“...Do I really…..carry her blood?” Everybody in the study, every person there, nodded in an almost coordinated unison, as Kinz--no, her father, her father slowly called out an unfamiliar name, his voice tinged with compassion that she’d never ever heard pass his lips before this day, before this very moment, that only served to drive in the reality of the situation. 

She is here. She was here because of some miracle, and by the miracle, Kinzo dedicated every scrap of his remaining empire to her, his weak, bony hand taken within hers as she took the ring from his trembling fingers while he breathed his final request. And, with a voice almost as cracked as a pulverized pane of glass, she fulfilled it with a single word. _ Father _.

She almost jumped out of her own skin when he fell, her single, shaking word severing soul from flesh as Kumasawa laid a hand on her shoulder, reassuring her that he had no regrets left. She didn’t need any reassurances that it was true-she’d seen it reflected in his eyes as he’d screamed to the heavens as that raging inferno within his body had flickered before, finally, blowing itself out. Kinzo Ushiromiya was no longer of this world, his wealth and his sins passed down entirely onto her shoulders. 

And what a weight it was. 

She was Beatrice, but the Beatrice she was...was not _her_ Beatrice. It wasn’t her, but somebody else that they’d wanted her to be. How long had this been going on? For how long had they buried that seed of a legend in the earth, hoping she might catch onto it as it flowered? How long had that aspect of herself been a lie, manufactured and produced for the sole purpose of having her eventually fill the dress scratching at her chest?

As Kumasawa and Nanjo began to talk about the previous version of her, left in a mansion, every aspect of her life clamped down upon until she’d been rewarded with her body defiled, her mind drifted to wondering what would have happened if they had decided upon that path for her as well. The decision to raise her as a servant happened when she was young, right? What would happen if they’d decided to have her walk that exact same path as her predecessor? 

As the gear of her mind slowly began to turn and turn and turn, she felt it tighten her chest, her lungs having to fight for every breath even as her head began to spin to the beat of her heart. Every aspect of her life wasn’t hers, no. It was _his_. She pulled a hand to her neck, trying to dislodge the tight frilled collar that felt like it was cutting off her airways, as slowly, Nanjo coughed and gestured to her. No, not her. Her _body_. 

“We wanted, even if it meant that you wouldn’t be able to have childr--”

The rest of his stammered words were drowned out by the deafening sound of her own heart kicking into overdrive, beating like a drum, the blood pounding in her ears overshadowing the words whose sanitized, clinical tone betrayed the disgusting truth that laid within. She didn’t hear the cry of “Shannon!” as she fell to the floor. Every single individual pang of pain about her body felt over the years came rushing back to gnaw at her body at once, flaying her skin open to burrow inside without leaving a single visible mark upon her body. 

Even as the gnawing calmed, she still felt that black, filthy blood pulsing beneath her skin as she tried to deny it, tried to argue against Nanjo and Genji, to say that they had the wrong person. But that argument only served to dig deeper and deeper into her, even as they tried to lay their hands on her shoulders, to comfort her. The touch of their hands was nothing compared to the vice around her chest, burrowing itself deeper with every heartbeat. 

She doesn’t know when every cell in her body stopped screaming at her. Just that when it stops, all she feels is a resounding pang of emptiness, as if every bit of ‘self’ had been ripped from her soul. Sayo Yasuda didn’t truly exist. Everything, _everything_ about her was fake. She could already see George recoiling in disgust in her mind, a dark grimace crossing his face as he spoke sweet, deadly venom. 

She was nothing more than those hapless caterpillars in the garden, wasn’t she? The poison of the Ushiromiya family was already flowing through her veins, stunting her body, cursing her future before she was even able to understand in full what that meant as the sins of her family fed on her soul. 

Even days later, when everything had almost gone back to as it had been, she still felt that curse moving beneath her skin. Every beat of her heart, every breath she takes, drives them in deeper, allows them to consume more of her flesh, of her soul. There was no waking moment where she was safe from that feeling, as those sins shifted and bore into her veins, devouring what was important to the soul while keeping the body intact, just like those poor, helpless caterpillars. 

No matter what they do, they are all doomed. That was the truth. The moment they were chosen, selected, _ groomed _ for that purpose, their life ends before it can even begin. There is no way for them to claw those worms out from their insides. Even if by some miracle those seeds never survive to feast upon their flesh, the damage, the poison injected by them is already coursing through their system. They will never change from pitiful worm to butterflies; their wings will never develop. They can only idly watch the days go by, as they grow closer and closer to death.   


She sees that now. 

She feels those worms, that knowledge that she’ll never be happy, that tainted blood, eating at her insides buried deep within her skin.

But, perhaps, that curse could be halted, stopped and killed before it could flourish and infect anybody else.

Even if it meant spilling liters upon liters of blood upon the ground of this island as she dug into her body, tainting the soil forevermore, the guts of the caterpillars indistinguishable from that of the wasps as they were spilled upon the dirt.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading. if you enjoy or can relate to this, it means a lot to me, as most of the prose and emotion here was drawn not from others, but from my own heart.


End file.
